[Z-man]

Originally posted by nota
but was it a body or a man in a coma, past out, or druged and was that part of the bribe?

Interesting idea, but your argument does not hold water - literally. I have studied the Roman crucifiction process in detail, and it is quite a gruelling ordeal.

In a nutshell, a person was nailed (sometimes tied) to the cross at three points: his wrists (not his hands like you see in most pictures) where nailed to the crossbeam, and his feet (at the ankles) were nailed to a small platform on the upright. (the wrists and ankles were used to secure a person solidly to the cross - if the hands and feet would have been used, over time, the person would slip off the cross).

Once a person was in that position, he would not be able to breathe unless he pushed up on his feet -- the weight on his arms and shoulders would prevent his lungs from expanding. So the person would push up on his platform to relieve the weight on his lungs. That action would cause terrific pain, and after some time, the person would have to 'rest' his legs and the weight would return to his shoulders/arms and he would not be able to breathe.

So eventually, a person on the cross would die of suffocation on the cross.

Ok - now to the point I'm trying to make:
Sometimes, a person would have greater stamina - so in order to speed up the process, the soilders would break that person's legs - at that point, he would not be able to support his weight with his legs, and would quite quickly suffocate. In Christ's case, they did not break his legs - He died without the soilders having to do that.

However, once a person was thought to be dead, the soilders would do a test - they would pierce the person's side. Rather:

Then, seeing that Jesus was already dead, he did not break His legs. However, for good measure he impaled His body on a spear, piercing upward on the left side between the fifth and sixth ribs. The wound was made about halfway between the side and the front. It pierced the pleural cavity and the heart, releasing the flow of water and blood as recorded in the Gospels. The clear fluid came from the lungs and chest cavity, filling up for six hours now with fluid. The blood came from the heart.

Source: http://aibi.gospelcom.net/articles/cruxf.htm

So after it was thought that Jesus was dead, he was impaled for good measure.

Jesus was not in a coma when they took him down off the cross - He was dead.

Originally posted by stuartj
Others believe he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. Now, no one has done that before. No one done since. No one alive today, or for 2000 years, has any reason to accept that this happened, except that it says so in the Bible. Thats your faith.

While I have faith in the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, and then ascended into heaven, there were people who were witnesses to these events. There were those who saw Him die, saw Him after He rose from the dead, and those who saw Him ascend into heaven. So there were eyewitnesses who saw these events.

-Z